From a Who down in "Whoknew?" ville...

Strange is the sensation when you move beyond Thanksgiving and are immediately launched headlong (like it or not) into the big Red, White & Blue shopping mall that is the United States in December...certainly even more so when you've spent the past several "Seasons" away from it.

Being back home this year, this first Holiday Season with Scout (outside of Wendy's womb) has been and is the real Christmas treat.

Beyond the presents of Playstations and gifts of gold (perhaps, Wendychka)...this Christmas just means so much more. And before I am accused of Hallmark sentimentality, please let me explain.

Yeah, I know he's not even a year old yet and December doesn't hold the magic and wonder it did for us as children...yet. But it will! And that promise of what's to come with him, of what he will be, of what we will be, and of what this time will be...that has filled me with more Christmas spirit than this heart (one that can too often be two sizes too small) has ever known.

You see, when his gaze is held by that tree, it's more than just the twinkling of those lights and the shine of a silver star...there deep down inside him (past the bananas he had for lunch and the burp he's building from them) THAT is where Christmas lives. Christmas is for him. Just as this holiday is for every child out there. Whether they've been naughty or nice or whether they're Christian, Hindu, Muslim or Jew...it just doesn't matter. The idea of this particular time of year transcends all that noise we're deafened by for the other 11 months.

Make no mistake, my friends...this gift that we're given each and every year is not only for them, it's from them.

As much as I loved Christmas as a kid, I never knew what it really meant. Beyond the story of the baby in the manger and the Six Million Dollar Man with the Kung Fu grip. Even beyond Nintendo and the 'Night Before Christmas'. Christmas is hope. Pure, unadultered, unashamed make this world a better place, right in your face HOPE. The hope that lives within my boy, the hope of the future that lies before him,and the hope of all the love we share as a family here in the land of the credit card Christmas.

This celebration is of a year that has forever changed not only my life, but my wife's as well. Our Christmas came quite early this year...on Easter Sunday actually. Everything else is just ornamentation, like so much tinsel on the tree.

Feliz Navidad and Veseloho Vam Rizdva!

Merry Christmas...and thank you both. From the bottom of my three-size swollen heart.

i saw mommy kissing santa claus.

Goo goo g'joob!

Good news on a surprisingly cold Monday morning. US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton has thrown his weight around the Security Council table for the last time.

Stick a fork in him. "He served his country with extraordinary dedication and skill" is my favorite line...yeah, that's what he did George.

Quick check o' the facts:

This war-mongering walrus (and no, he most certainly is not the eggman) couldn't even get confirmed by a Republican controlled congress. These are the same people who love to impose our will militarily around the globe and they wouldn't even get behind this loon.

Bolton is just frightening. Seriously, it's like Captain Kangaroo hopped up on Red Bull and hate.

Good riddance to him and his "Fuck you if you don't agree with us" style of "diplomacy". What Bolton never got (nor has Bush for that matter) is that it's the United NATIONS...not the United STATES. These malevolent boys that somehow managed to sit down at the grown ups table have just been so pleased with getting their hands on the controls that common sense and actually working through our differences with anything other than tanks and tomahawk missiles never even enters the equation.

So W sneaks him in the back door during a congressional recess a bit over a year ago and now he's bowing out before we have a chance to unceremoniously dump his ass.

Just a few of my favorite nuggets from the captain:

"Diplomacy is not an end in itself if it does not advance US interests."

"We estimate that once Iraq acquires fissile material - whether from a foreign source or by securing the materials to build an indigenous fissile material capability - it could fabricate a nuclear weapon within one year."

"There's no such thing as the United Nations. If the UN secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

Adios, El Capitan. What a beautiful difference you made and oh how you give, give, give 'til it hurts. We'll miss you...and Mr. Green Jeans.

i don't do carrots.